Anthroposcopy by Paul Painting employs the main Gallery. Painting offers the viewer a body of work that distils the human form with the intensity of an interrogators gaze. The pseudoscience of physiognomy, also called anthroposcopy, with its assumptions that character can be gleaned from a study of facial features is a venerable and equally questionable one. It has enjoyed cycles of credibility and scientific contempt. The notion that our drives and passions distort and impress upon our features is an eminently attractive, and evocative hypothesis. For an artist it is alive with visual potential and richness.

Brief Encounters is a series of painted portraits on paper. Frans Smit mentored by the late Lucian Freud “squashes” the painted surface, destroying an accurate portrayal and any intimacy with the subject, whilst offering a sense of the person, a compelling encounter.

Mapondera imagined himself living the life of an animal, a dog that spends the day on a leash, a pig in a dirty sty, dog fighting, cock fighting and the ruthlessness of humans that commit such violations on animals. The same way they would abuse a fellow human if chance allowed. Ani-Men (A Human in an Animal) is a series of paintings that through the above lens investigates social abuses.

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